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‘Sarge’ piles on the stair-stepping miles

Retired U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Steve Sullivan has taken matters into his own hands to improve his cardiovascular health. The 71-year-old Fitbit user climbs stairs and has racked up more than 36,000 flights of stairs in the past 15 months.(Photo: Alvin McBean/Democrat)Buy Photo

Ever since the Fitbit craze, you can learn a lot about what your body is able to do — even the internet is filled with statistics on length of stride, height of steps, and equivalency values for how many steps it would take to walk across Africa or climb the world’s highest mountain.

Arcane information for some, but for retired Air Force Master Sgt. Steve Sullivan the little wrist device — and a jarring health report — have turned what was a physical fitness commitment into a passion that drives him ever upward — flight after flight after flight. Now, according to Fitbit, he’s climbed mountains, walked across continents, and has the vitals of a kid.

At Premier Health Center in Tallahassee, almost everybody can identify the “stair-step guy.” He’s the balding, 6’4, 189-pound engine who is walking up the concrete and steel central stairway, then with head down, turning around and walking back down again. Over and over, for two or three hours at a time. There will be the occasional stop to chat. In fact, Sullivan acknowledges that he’s got a great social circle thanks to his front and center ascents at the gym. But after but a moment of friendly respite, he resumes his slog, sweat-shirt drenched, but with a smile on his face.

The question is: Why?

Sullivan, who at 71, is barely out of breath as he leans against a stair rail, says he’s always believed in fitness — after all, a life of military discipline made setting goals and achieving them his way of life. And he intended to do the same with his own body.

“I really began walking when I was stationed in Germany,” he says. There, Volksmarches, “people’s walks” were organized in the late ‘60s in an effort to include citizens in a countrywide fitness program. Sullivan participated in 20-mile and the occasional 42-mile walk each weekend. “My best was walking 42 miles in five hours,” he says, always aware of the stats of his efforts.

But his career was foremost on his mind in those years. “In 1968, at 20, I joined the Air Force, inspired by the comic strip character, Steve Canyon,” he laughs. But it was the life for Sullivan. “I was trained as a fuel expert, refueling planes, eventually designing fueling systems, doing material controls on fuels, and setting up a school to teach about refueling of the then classified F17.”

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Retired U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sergeant, Steve Sullivan has taken matters into his own hands to improve his cardiovascular health. The 71 year old Fitbit user climbs stairs and has racked up more than 36,000 flights of stairs in the past 15 months.(Photo: Alvin McBean/Democrat)

And he saw the world.

Happily answering to his favorite moniker, “Sarge,” Sullivan says that in addition to Germany, he was stationed in Phan Rang in Vietnam; McCoy in Orlando; Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta; and Yokota Air Force Base in Tokyo, Japan. He became the Commandant of an Air Force Tactical Air Command portable refueling school at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and at Secret Air Force Base he was involved with the design of a refueling system for the “fresh off the drawing boards” F117 Nighthawk Stealth Air Craft.

A peak in his career came when he was asked by Admiral Frank Kelso, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command Forces, USCINCLANT, to be his senior enlisted adviser, or command master chief. Yet even as he rounded out his 27-year career at Ramstein Air Force Base as a liaison between the Nebraska-based Strategic Air Command and U.S. Air Force Europe working on special fuels for the SR71, U2 and The TR1, Sullivan was planning where next he could use his skills.

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Retired U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sergeant, Steve Sullivan has taken matters into his own hands to improve his cardiovascular health. The 71 year old climbs an average of 25,000 steps per day.(Photo: Alvin McBean/Democrat)

“There were only two days between my retirement from the Air Force and my putting on the uniform again to teach ROTC at Godby High School. He continued there for the next 18 years, thrilled with each student, some of whom he saw enter the two U.S. military academies.

Sullivan reluctantly sits down for a moment between flights. He’s been climbing for 40 minutes and is dripping wet.

But it was his heart that prompted him to begin the regimen that he currently follows. “I didn’t have any real symptoms, but my blood pressure was high…and the doctor told me I had an irregular heartbeat. I already was spending a couple of hours on the treadmill a day, but I decided that making the heart even stronger would keep me from having to have a possible invasive heart procedure with a lot of risks.”

That was a year and a half ago, and since that time Sullivan has increased his regimen to what some might consider brutal. He notes that others should only begin such a schedule under the advice of their physician. Yet he says his doctor now tells him to, “just do what you’re doing.” And Fitbit has been a little fitness accountant ever since.

“I started with 50 flights of 18 steps — the program only counts steps going up,” he says. “Now I walk at least 25,000 steps on the rubber track… 12 miles a day… followed by climbing 150 flights in about an hour.” And he has records.

“In the 16 months I’ve been at Premier, I’ve climbed 36,000 flights of stairs.” That’s the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest over nine times. “And following the Fitbit Sahara Award for 2,983 miles, the Nile Award for 4,132 miles, I just earned the Africa Badge acknowledging that I’ve walked 5,000 miles. That’s like walking across Africa.”

Just for the record, the Eiffel Tower is 1,710 steps to the top, and the Statue of Liberty, a paltry 354.

The question ‘why’ really doesn’t seem relevant to Sullivan at this point. Yes, he wants to inspire others, particularly the young people to whom he became so devoted. He wants gym rats or slackers to see that with some determination and time, good health and a zeal for life can be enhanced. And he wants to bask in the feeling of accomplishment; the hitting of a goal; the doing things the right way if not the easiest.

Steve Sullivan, always a military man, even in gym shorts and sweats, striving for the top, and maybe hitting the stars.